You Can’t Sit Here

Today at TCJ, it's Monday: the best day of the week. We're launching it with Dave Nuss, who sat down with Alex Deuben to talk about Revival House Press, the publisher responsible for one of the best comics of the last twenty years, (Men's Feelings #1,) about how he got started, what he's been doing, and where he's going next.

The perception I have after doing this for nearly a decade is that some form of immediate financial success generally requires a shift to the middle. It may mean publishing artists and work that appeals to a broader audience. Not to knock anyone doing this but it’s just not right for our press. I like challenging work that may not fit a conventional framework and that forces the audience to contend with it on a formal level. I think it’s one of the virtues of being a “micropress” publisher. You can publish on your own terms and at your own pace. I respect Austin English from that vantage point and what’s he done with Domino. He releases books when he’s able to do so, and of artists he specifically admires. Going back to the curatorial idea, I think publishing along these lines serves the purpose of bringing important or meaningful yet potentially overlooked artists to some degree of greater prominence. Another worthy example is the book Robyn Chapman released a few years ago, the Deep Girl collection. Those mini’s were so vital in the '90s and it was wonderful to see Ariel Bourdeaux’s name on the shelves again.

Cartoonist and writer Hien Pham wants It Will Be Hard to be many things: a story about queerness, sex positivity, gray asexuality, polyamory, people of color, body image, love and relationships; it’s also a comic and an interactive choose-your-own-adventure, sort of; readers are also warned up front that the story contains a section of “explicit sexual content,” which, in the gameplay aspect of the story requires a reader’s consent or it can be skipped altogether.

Over at Diversions of the Groovy Kind, you'll find one of the best Mike Zeck covers of all time. (Bobo!)

Finally, i'm writing this blog post from the airport after attending the wedding of two TCJ contributors--congratulations to Geoff & Tessa, who both made crazed wedding promises to return to us soon, promises I aim to hold them to.